FanHouse HonusWagner

Starting Five is our wrapup of the previous day's baseball action, with a quick nod to what's ahead.

You Oughta Know ...
That the Marlins have had an interesting opening three weeks. After Sunday's 13-2 loss to the Phillies, which was so ugly that outfielder Cody Ross pitched the ninth inning, the Fish have dropped six in a row. That came immediately after they started 11-1.

Which is the real team? Most, likely neither.

"We're not an 11-1 team, and we're not an 0-6 team -- we're somewhere in the middle," manager Fredi Gonzalez said.

So now the Marlins are 11-7, having scored 93 runs and allowed 89 runs. That type of run production ought to leave them at a little over .500, which is where many prognosticators figured they'd be when the season began.

Speaking of no one caring about Barry Bonds, how's that record-breaker auction going these days? Oh, yeah: not good.

With just eight days left in the auction, No. 756 is doing meager returns at the online auction house. For a ball that would probably have fetched $500,000 on the open market -- and far more just a few years ago -- that's a low, low number. Who says you need to be a millionaire collector or a memorabilia conglomerate? At under $200,000, Bonds and his steroid-infused records are bringing luxury souvenirs to the middle class.

Not so much the case for Honus Wagner. The rarest baseball card in the world just dwarfed Barry's numbers: the Wager card just sold for $2.8 million, just a few months after it was purchased for $2.3 million. That's, what, 10 times the value of Bonds' ball? I know Wagner's card is rare, and there is a cloud of mystique surrounding its ownership, but, still, that discrepancy seems a little strange, if not downright insane.

Here's Wayne Gretzky and former Kings owner Bruce McNall watching magician David Copperfield tearing their new $500,000 Honus Wagner baseball card to pieces. But, feat not! He's a magician, dummy.

Just watch the clip and be amazed by his skills. I mean, if magicians can do "magic" and all, why don't they just make a million dollars appear in their lap all the time. Or, maybe they should make a bunch of food appear in impoverished countries. But here magicians are, trifling along and tearing apart and repairing baseball cards. What about humanity, people?

Also, the hair on Gretzky and Copperfield is just gorgeous, no?

I collected baseball cards for a few years as a kid, and for me and my friends the card we were always looking for was the 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey, Jr. rookie card. Upper Deck had just entered the market and was more or less revolutionizing the industry -- the high-quality paper practically felt like plastic, and, holy crap, there's a freaking hologram on it! When you opened a pack of Upper Deck cards you felt like you were peeking into the future.

I never did get my hands on one, and though I have a bit more disposable income now, I'm still a little daunted by the $40 price tag ... which I guess means I'll never get my hands on the 1909 Honus Wagner tobacco card:

The "Holy Grail of baseball cards," the famous 1909 Honus Wagner tobacco card once owned by hockey great Wayne Gretzky, has sold for a record-setting $2.35 million, the seller of the card said Monday.

The buyer has only been identified as a Southern California collector. SCP Auctions Inc., a company that holds sports memorabilia auctions, said it bought a small share of the card. It is scheduled to be shown at a news conference at Dodger Stadium on Tuesday.

The seller, Brian Seigel, in 2000 paid a then-record $1,265,000 for the prize card, which is in much better shape than the others.

You know the card is big-time when companies are buying "shares" of it. The press conference will be at Dodger Stadium, and just to put all of this into perspective, the card is apparently worth more than what about half of the team made last year. Given the quantity of cards produced these days, it's hard to imagine another card ever being worth as much, even if it randomly features George W. Bush and Mickey Mantle cheering in the background.